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Science and Technology

Sara Wachter-Boettcher warns that failing to account for the unintended ways technology shapes our lives can cause us pain that might be avoided if we think about how we design digital platforms and apps differently.More

Missy Makinia donated her kidney to whoever might need it. Her transplant surgeon — Josh Mezrich — invited Shannon into his operating room to see firsthand what it takes to remove and transport a human kidney.More

Porochista Khakpour has been fighting a mystery illness for as long as she can remember. Eventually, she got a diagnosis — late-stage Lyme disease — but a diagnosis hasn't given her much resolution.More

Novelist Siri Hustvedt knows how the creative process feels. Neuroscientist Heather Berlin knows what it looks like in the brain. Together with Steve, they explore the emerging science of creativity.More

Lynne Cox is an extreme swimmer. At 18, she swam between the islands of New Zealand. She broke the men's and women's records for the English Channel. Then she did the unthinkable — swimming to Antarctica.More

Depending on where you live, winter can be tough to get through. It’s cold, it gets dark early, the weather’s messy. Naturalist Bernd Heinrich shares some amazing stories about the ingenious ways animals survive winter.More

How does a hummingbird survive in subzero winter temperatures? Why endure them at all? Author T.C. Boyle couldn’t understand why the small bird would be anywhere near his mountain writing retreat, but he found the answer in Bernd Heinrich’s “Winter World.”More

If teens have trouble remembering where they put their homework, how are they going to marshall a legislative agenda? On the other hand, maybe teens have mental advantages adults don’t. Steve Paulson asked neuroscientist Frances Jensen to weigh in.More

Elena Passarello’s latest book, “Animals Strike Curious Poses,” is a journey through stories of the wild ones: the mammoths, spiders, birds and primates that have left their marks on our society. To the Best of Our Knowledge host Anne Strainchamps talked with Passarello about the “animal gaze” and the legacy of Mozart’s starling, among other animal tales.More

Shattered by her father's sudden death, writer Helen Macdonald began dreaming of wild hawks. In an effort to move beyond her grief, she bought and trained a wild goshawk — one of the world's fiercest birds of prey. But between the bird and her grief, she became, in her words "more hawk than human."More

Maybe you can do without social media, if your life is already pretty comfortable. But you know what? Some people can't wait for something better to come along. They need social media today. Like organizer DeRay Mckesson.More